


Relative Size (or Four Times John Felt Impossibly Small and One Time He Felt Larger Than Life)

by Lindentreeisle (Captainblue)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kink Meme, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:24:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainblue/pseuds/Lindentreeisle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for ASiP</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relative Size (or Four Times John Felt Impossibly Small and One Time He Felt Larger Than Life)

**Four times...**

“I can't believe you. I know I taught you better than this,” John's father rages. “Didn't I? Didn't I?”

“Yessir,” John whispers from his place curled against the passenger door. “But-” _But they called her a filthy dyke_ , he couldn't say. Because he isn't supposed to know that it was sort-of true, and if he outs Harry to their dad she will absolutely murder him.

“But nothing! I don't care what she did, even if she kicked you in the _goolies_ , a man never, never hits a girl!”

Even if she'd spent months pretending to be Harry's friend before destroying her in front of everyone. Even if Harry had cried, after.

“A man who hits a girl,” his dad lectures. “Is the _smallest_ kind of man there is.” And John reckons maybe he's right.

-*-

Medical discharge. The words are like a weight of iron pushing down on him, compressing him. He watches the other soldiers getting cleared, going home to their regiments in Jalalabad and Kandahar and Lashkar Gah, and hopes that the weight will press him down into the floor so he can disappear entirely.

Just being in Camp Bastion Hospital is a special kind of hell; he's surrounded by doctors he trained with at Sandhurst and fresh-faced new arrivals who remind him of himself before his first combat assignment. Each one of them is a painful reminder of what he isn't any more and never will be again.

“Of course you're still a soldier,” his surgeon tells him. “You'll always be a soldier.” But John remembers when this same doctor said _Damn you, Watson, it'll take five men to replace you- but good luck out there_ and now he looks at his thrice-daily dose of painkillers and his shaking hand and his leg that hurts for no goddamned good reason and he can't quite meet his former colleague's eyes.

-*-

The woman is sweet, and she's pretty, and she's alone. She lets John buy her a drink, and then she buys him one, and they eat nuts and cheer for Arsenal, watching the telly above the bar. It's the first time he's been on the pull in- God, who even knows. Definitely the first time since he was discharged from Selly Oak, anyway.

The alcohol and the chatting and the quiet laughter wear down his defenses and boost his confidence. He feels like a normal bloke, for the first time in a very long time. Which makes it even more of a surprise when he finally makes his move, and she stiffens and pulls back and her expression goes queer and awkward.

“Oh god, John, I'm sorry. I'm just not looking for anyone right now, you understand?”

He smiles and says of course, but he hides his shaking hand under the table and squeezes his cane tightly. Because her voice is saying “It's not you, it's me” but her face is saying, “God, you've _got_ to be kidding.”

-*-

“Soon as we get all this rubbish cleaned up-” “Almost moved in-”

Their voices echo simultaneously and John is willing to bite off his tongue if it will let him take the words back. Running into Mike was his first bit of luck in ages, because it's brought him to this lovely flat and this fascinating man looking for someone to share it, and now he's already spoiled it.

The man, Holmes, pauses a moment and begins to move things about busily. John would say not to bother, but that would make it even worse. The subject rapidly changes and Holmes just as quickly gives up the tidying but John can't stand there with his leg hurting like buggery and he has no choice but to find a chair to be awkward and pathetic in.

He can't go back to Afghanistan and he can't meet a girl, those are evidently givens. Is it too much to ask, wanting to be capable of finding a flatshare? Of behaving like a normal human being for more than thirty seconds at a stretch?

-*-  
 **Plus one...**

“Good shot,” he says, with his patented _Look at me being clever_ smirk, and something in John shrinks, because Sherlock has been over there talking to the police detective for the last five minutes. Nothing shows on his face though; he can tell, because shooting the cabbie straightened some twisted little part of him right out and he hasn't been this _in control_ in months. He's going to miss this feeling when it disappears, which it is starting to do as he waits for the horror and disgust to flash across Sherlock's face.

“I don't suppose you'd do time for this, but let's avoid the court case,” and Sherlock still looks strangely normal.

John is growing more puzzled by the second, so when Sherlock comes right out and says it, _You have just killed a man_ , John admits it. He smiles a tight, anxious smile and keeps waiting for that casual acceptance to fall away.

Then Sherlock laughs, and cracks a joke at the expense of the man John has just cold-bloodedly murdered. And John realizes that he doesn't have to worry about being abnormal; because if he intends to wait for Sherlock Holmes to dismiss him, he'll be waiting a hell of a long time.


End file.
